CRACK99

The Takedown of a $100 Million Chinese Software Pirate

By: David Locke Hall

Narrated by: Mark Peckham

The utterly gripping story of the most outrageous case of cyber piracy prosecuted by the US Department of Justice.

A former US Navy intelligence officer, David Locke Hall was a federal prosecutor when a bizarre-sounding website, CRACK99, came to his attention. It looked like Craigslist on acid, but what it sold was anything but amateurish: thousands of high-tech software products used largely by the military, and for mere pennies on the dollar. Want to purchase satellite tracking software? No problem. Aerospace and aviation simulations? No problem. Communications systems designs? No problem. Software for Marine One, the presidential helicopter? No problem. With delivery times and customer service to rival the world's most successful online retailers, anybody, anywhere - including rogue regimes, terrorists, and countries forbidden from doing business with the United States - had access to these goods for any purpose whatsoever. But who was behind CRACK99, and where were they?

The Justice Department discouraged potentially costly, risky cases like this, preferring the low-hanging fruit that scored points from politicians and the public. But Hall and his colleagues were determined to find the culprit. They bought CRACK99's products for delivery in the United States, buying more and more to appeal to the budding entrepreneur in the man they identified as Xiang Li. After winning his confidence, they lured him to Saipan - a US commonwealth territory where Hall's own father had stormed the beaches with the marines during World War II. There, they set up an audacious sting that culminated in Xiang Li's capture and imprisonment. The value of the goods offered by CRACK99? A cool $100 million.

An eye-opening look at cybercrime and its chilling consequences for national security, CRACK99 is like a caper that resonates with every amazing detail.

©2015 David Locke Hall (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

sad story of power gone awry

The author tries (in vain) to make the reader identify with software companies as victims, and ignores the outrageous prices they extort from the US government. .. It's sad to learn the lengths said government then go to punish copyright infringements. Ass backwards.

interesting listen

a little long on details but interesting story. worth the time. I think it was the authors intention to give a sense of the amount of work that went into the case

Volume is too low

Recorded volume is too low. Can barely hear it with the sound all the way up.

Not what I thought it was going to be.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No, it was not like the story I was expecting at all. Maybe it was my fault for not looking in to it enough.

Was CRACK99 worth the listening time?

I thought books like @WAR, Data and Goliath where way better. So no it was not worth my time.

Great Story - everyone should listen

Story was great and exciting, but also contained valuable knowledge. Reader also done a great job. Kudos!

Excellent subject matter and revealing facts

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes and no ... I loved the subject and facts about the tremendous amount of stealing by china's government sponsors crackers and cyber thieves.

Have you listened to any of Mark Peckham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

First listen by this narrator but liked his voice acting.

Could you see CRACK99 being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

YES!

Any additional comments?

The story's subject was very interesting as it has become a very hot topic in the computer security community and is right in line with many articles explicitly detailing the amount of financial/economic destruction being done by foreign governments stealing America's corporate and government intellectual property.
While the story but good, the author's writing style was ... shall I say ... wordy?! No, it was extremely wordy, over-cooked, redundant and repetitive to an extreme. Reminded me of a Baptist preacher. Anyone could start reading/listening just about anywhere in the book and understand the whole story because of how much he constantly repeated himself, as if he was talking to 2nd graders. I almost stopped listening to the story because of this, but I found that I could play it at double speed and even then skip several minutes/chapters and not miss anything important to the story.

Decent potential, but strays off topic constantly

The core of the story seems good, but the author continually dives into totally unrelated events. I agree with other reviews saying this could be told in about an hour and go into more technical detail about the actual techniques.

Extremely well-told story and gives a lot of insight into what it is like to be a federal prosecutor

David L. Hall is an incredible storyteller and seems like a really good man who has fought to focus the Justice Department on prosecuting important issues of national security rather than easily but pointless prosecutions like putting (usually non-white) drug users in jail. He has fought hard to get the Justice Department to focus on important crimes that matter, and he tells that story here.

Important story that needed to be told

I suspect that few know that IP theft goes on at this level. I also suspect that few know that the US govt can conduct investigations and arrest operations at this level. This book does a great job unveiling the murky world of international IP theft and the cloaked world of US govt operations trying to address the problem. I found the insiders perspective to be both interesting and informative.

self aggrandizing leo puffery....

the case gets repeatedly overshadowed by the officer's need to tell his own life story about how cool and awesome he is it gets in the way of actually understanding the state of cyber crime in the international system and the difficulty of protecting intellectual property. it's not really the author's fault many of the books written by US law enforcement agencies like the CIA and FBI use these books as a way to introduce new potential law officers into the force nevertheless it's a shame.